"I hate dressing for a ball at this hour," she said, rather
breathlessly. "I don't feel half-dressed by midnight."
Madeleine, in street costume, was behind her with a great box.
"She has something for my hair," she explained. Her tone was nervous,
but he was entirely unsuspicious.
"You don't mind if I don't go on to Page's, do you? I'm rather tired,
and I ought to stay at the club as late as I can."
"Of course not. I shall probably pick up some people, anyhow. Everybody
is going on."
In the car she chattered feverishly and he listened, lapsing into one of
the silences which her talkative spells always enforced.
"What flowers are you having?" she asked, finally.
"White lilacs and pussy-willow. Did your orchids come?"
"Thanks, yes. But I'm not wearing them. My gown is flame color. They
simply shrieked."
"Flame color?"
"A sort of orange," she explained. And, in a slightly defiant tone:
"Rodney's is a costume dance, you know."
"Do you mean you are in fancy dress?"
"I am, indeed."
He was rather startled. The annual dinner of the board of governors of
the City Club and their wives was a most dignified function always. He
was the youngest by far of the men; the women were all frankly dowagers.
They represented the conservative element of the city's social life,
that element which frowned on smartness and did not even recognize the
bizarre. It was old-fashioned, secure in its position, influential, and
slightly tedious.
"There will be plenty in fancy dress."
"Not at the dinner."
"Stodgy old frumps!" was Natalie's comment. "I believe you would rather
break one of the ten commandments than one of the conventions," she
added.
It was when he saw her coming down the staircase in the still empty
clubhouse that he realized the reason for her defiant attitude when she
acknowledged to fancy dress. For she wore a peacock costume of the most
daring sort. Over an orange foundation, eccentric in itself and very
short, was a vivid tunic covered with peacock feathers on gold tissue,
with a sweeping tail behind, and on her head was the towering chest of
a peacock on a gold bandeau. She waved a great peacock fan, also,
and half-way down the stairs she paused and looked down at him, with
half-frightened eyes.
"Do you like it?"
"It is very wonderful," he said, gravely.
He could not hurt her. Her pleasure in it was too naive. It dawned on
him then that Natalie was really a child, a spoiled and wilful child.
And always afterward he tried to remember that, and to judge her
accordingly.